#magicsecretlair

[kozyndan]

Dan - For the Island card in our @mtgsecretlair Lands set, I made a VERY loose sketch to start the Island land and passed it off to Kozy as she had an idea for how it should look as the comp made her think of the quite famous (and, to our mind, a little odd) old ukiyo-e print from the early 1800’s titled “Hakone: View of the Lake (Hakone, kosui no zu)” by ukiyo-e master #Hiroshige (1797-185). Whenever we see this to print reproduced in books it jumps out as being strangely colored - with a mountainside turned into a patchwork quilt of color blocks. I always wondered if the color choices in this famous version of it (other prints exist of the same artwork that use a more naturalistic color palette for the mountainside, but they are not so common) were made by the artist himself, or by the woodblock printer who pulled the editions. Its a funky print, and was a good starting point for kozy to make this fantastical (but still very Japanese looking) Island card. I went in and tightened the image up (and added some of the narrative details including the bunny sea serpent and the island denizens reacting a massive carrot effigy to appease it) before kozy painted the final inks in #nihonga pigment on washi paper. We passed it back and forth to color the work digitally. If you are a Magic player or a kozyndan fan (or both!), consider pre-ordering a set! They are available only until January 6th. #kozyndan #magicthegathering #magicsecretlair #mtgsecretlair #island #bunnyserpent #ukiyoe #magiccardart 💫 (at Yamanashi Prefecture) https://www.instagram.com/p/Cl5WiR_OLvO/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[kozyndan]

Dan: The Forest card was a fun one for me. I sometimes like to think about what the forests of Japan (which are really EVERYWHERE in Japan) looked like long ago, before all the big, old growth trees were cut down and the forests replanted in neat rows of Japanese cedar and cypress (which is devastating to the land now - these forests have little biodiversity, their deficiencies have wide reaching effects - extending to a decline in river fish for instance). Occasionally you can still find a massive old tree, usually near a temple or shrine, but I like to think about how amazing these forest must have been hundreds of years ago (or even 90 years ago). Which got me to thinking of the Redwoods of my home state of California. I knew I wanted to draw a big old-growth forest, so I let my my imagination steer the artwork into an amalgamation of Japanese forests and Redwood forests. Kozy had done an alternate comp with a rainy forest with ninjas swinging in the trees that wasn’t ultimately chosen by the art director. I loved the idea of the ninjas (a childhood favorite of mine - what boy in the 1980’s didn’t want to be a ninja?) So I drew them into my final comp! Kozy did a bang up job beautifully re-doing my comp in ink for me to color.

If you are a Magic player or a kozyndan fan (or both!), consider pre-ordering a set! They are available HERE only until January 6th. 💫 (at Yamanashi Prefecture) https://www.instagram.com/p/CmXx4ExJEdI/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[kozyndan]

Dan - I knew really immediately what we should do for Mountain. Living in #Yamanashi its a pretty easy one to do. If you don’t know, Yamanashi Prefecture is a small prefecture bordering Tokyo prefecture and is essentially a big bowl - a valley surrounded on all sides by mountains including the tallest (Mt. Fuji) and second tallest (Kitadake) in Japan. Standing in the valley there is simply mountains in every direction.

The kilns where kozy goes to fire her ceramics, which is located in the small village of #Hirabayashi ( #平林 ), partway up the slope of Mt. Kushigata ( #櫛形山 ). From above the village you can get fantastic views of Mt. Fuji. The found out that the manager of the kilns, Okubo-san, is an avid Magic player, so we decided to feature his ceramics in the Mountain card. This was made easy by the fact what he mainly produces is a small ceramic replica of a particular kind of traditional pagoda-shaped protective charm. It was a perfect addition to our version of this spectacular Mountain View. Kozy loved the idea too, so she also worked on her own composition for the Mountain card.

While we ultimately went with my overall composition for the piece, I really loved the village she had created so I extracted the shoddily drawn village in my own comp and situated her village into my scene. At the very end I thought I wanted to have some more characters near the temple, so I imagined a warrior monk that has pet rabbits descending the stairs on the mountainside.

The Mountain card really is a scene that is very “Yamanashi” to us - its a common thing to drive up into the mountains (and perhaps hike) to find a view looking down into the valley with Mt. Fuji towering in the distance - and my does it look radiant at sunset!

If you are a Magic player or a kozyndan fan (or both!), consider pre-ordering a set! They are available only until January 6th. 

https://secretlair.wizards.com/us/search/kozyndan

[kozyndan]

Dan: We understood Llanowar Elves card in our @mtgsecretlair “Another Story” (non-lands) drop only as “cool warrior elves of the woods” - which obviously sounds BADASS to me. Our backyard has a forest of sorts, but its mostly an endless dense bamboo grove that I spent a year cleaning out of dead fallen bamboo culms. It made sense to me then to set this illustration in a bamboo forest (especially considering their prevalence here in Japan). The central elf has his overcoat (kataginu) emblazoned with the same crest (kamon) that is on our own kura (home storage house). I gave each elf a forehead tattoo based on animals we see (or at least find evidence of) in our village - boards, deer, tank, fox, and rabbit (of course). If you are a Magic player or a kozyndan fan (or both!), consider pre-ordering a set! 

They are available only until January 6th. AVAILABLE HERE!

[kozyndan]

kozyndan Secret Lair drops for Magic the Gathering!

Magic the Gathering has released two sets of cards designed by us as Secret lair drops that are only available to order for one month - December 5th 2022-January 6th 2023.

Get them HERE!

The art director at Wizards of the Coast first emailed us about doing some cards for Magic:the Gathering @mtgsecretlair way back May 2020.  We were in limbo at the time having come to Japan the before the first lockdown in Los Angeles to finish work on our house here in Yamanashi, but coming to the realization that maybe we would be in Japan for a long time.  

We didn’t really get to work right away - at the time we thought maybe we should learn how to grow our own food in case shit got worse!  So we spent most of our days outside and away from our sketchbooks.  But eventually toward the end of summer, I finally sat down and really had a look at the cards that had been settled on and just started sketching.  This first sketch came out pretty fast and by the time 

We fleshed out this first illustration, 8 months into what was supposed to be a 2.5 month long trip to Japan, the overall theme for the whole set of cards started to take root as we settled into actually living in the Japanese countryside, here where kozy was born and raised. We’d make an homage to our immediate surroundings, to Kozy’s home prefecture Yamanashi, and to the traditions of Japanese ukiyo-e art that have always informed our work together.  Planting the world of historic Japan into the world of Magic:the Gathering (or is it vice versa?) to make “Another Story”. 

  Instead of the traditional Western-style swords and sorcery theme, we opted for vibes more reminiscent of Edo era and for the most part tried to limit ourselves more or less to coloring that could have been achieved by master of ukiyo-e printmaking techniques of the time. The connections vary from small details to quite specific overall scenes. The overcoat of the main Llanowar Elf bears the same dove and bamboo crest as the one on our kura (home storage building), and is set in a bamboo forest much like the massive grove that runs along the creek in our backyard. The Mountain card depicts a view from above the village of Hirabayashi, Yamanashi, where kozy has gone to fire her ceramic sculptures in traditional. Wood-firing kilns for the last 3 years. 

If you are a Magic player or a kozyndan fan (or both!), consider pre-ordering a set!